Ok FINE I'll eat better already

There has been a huge Whole30 trend happening with my friend group (and I'm not sure if this is just a Bay Area-centric thing, or a national craze). I haven't quite been against the whole idea, more apathetic about adding one more thing to my list of things to do. But, on a semi-whim, John and I have decided to try out Whole30 for the month of August. I figure - we aren't traveling or doing anything really crazy next month, so why the heck not?

Being an OCD crazy person, I needed to make a spreadsheet to wrap my head around what we were doing. My favorite thing so far is that we can basically plan out every single thing we plan to eat in advance, make sure we have it in the house, and then food becomes sort of brainless (which will hopefully help me to put more of my brain power and focus into my work).

We put together this chart for our next week, and will be shopping on Monday for the majority of the items we need. We also decided we may have to do two shops and go back on Friday as well (which is abnormal for us - we usually just shop once a week and at one store), so it will be interesting to see if Whole30 ruins our grocery budget. I am hoping that because the majority of the things we are buying are veggies that it will still be within our budget range (we try to spend about $100 a week, or $400 total a month), but we'll see how it goes.

So far, my biggest reservations are about giving up dairy (CRYING FACE) and bread (AHHH WTF). Also John read that day three usually presents you with a giant headache, so that sounds super fun.

Now, off to down all of this freaking iced chai and cheese in the fridge before Monday gets here.

Marissa + Chris: Invitations and Wedding Decor

It's been a long time since I've posted (luckily, I've been busy with a full-time job, so I'm not complaining!), but I have a week off for the holidays and I am taking advantage of the free time by cleaning up my computer and getting ready for a fresh start in 2014. I found these gorgeous photos that I hadn't had time to put up from the wedding of my friends Marissa + Chris last summer, and I wanted to share them all with you.

Photos by the talented duo at Dahlphotog

I helped to design the save the dates and the invitations, and then Marissa and I tag-teamed the day-of crafting and design. So much fun to be a part of the process of putting together an entire event! I am really pleased with how well it turned out, and so thrilled to be a part of a great friends wedding.

I just uploaded the full series onto my website, go check it out!

Our friend Kate also wrote a post about Marissa and I's pinwheel making adventures, check it out here (and learn to make your own custom pinwheels!)

{xoxo, Stephanie}

Featured on the Boxcar Press Blog

This past Friday I was featured on the Boxcar Press blog, for my ampersand tattoo. Check it out here!

When I was about to graduate from CCA (California College of the Arts) with a degree in Graphic Design, I knew I wanted a bit more of a hands-on approach to design in my life than most of my classes had emphasized (I took a lot of letterpress and bookmaking on the side to make up for it). On a whim I applied to the Hatch Show Print internship program for the month after graduation, and I got accepted! Thus, my boyfriend and I relocated to Nashville, Tennessee for 6 weeks.

While at Hatch I got some AMAZING experience playing with type, designing and printing, and learning about the history of letterpress. I knew I had found my calling, and I felt that it was such a milestone experience that I wanted to get a tattoo to commemorate it. I have always loved the Caslon ampersand, and ampersands in general (my cat is even named Ampersand), so when I saw a Caslon ampersand woodblock at Hatch I knew it was the tattoo I wanted. My other tattoos are kind of hidden, so I also knew I wanted it in a place I would see (and others would see) all the time, which is why it’s on my wrist.

I pulled a print of the woodblock, and took that to the tattoo artist to copy. I specifically wanted it to have some woodgrain texture so it would look more like woodtype, and less like digital type. Overall, though getting the tattoo hurt a lot, I absolutely LOVE my tattoo. It is a constant reminder of my passion for history, letterpress, and things that are well crafted and handmade.

Kate + Jason: Guestbook

Hello all! Haven't posted in the longest time, because my job has been keeping me pretty busy. And I've also been trying to keep my freelance work to a minimum because of the busy workload. I can't share anything I've been doing at work on here, but I can share some of the freelance projects I've been doing!

I made this guestbook for my friend Kate's wedding to the fabulous Jason this past May. I love any excuse to make books!

Gorgeous photo by Alfred & Emma

Now to finish up the paper goods for my friend Marissa's 

wedding this weekend, so photos to come of that soon!

Twig & Fig: Chinese New Year Cards for the Year of the Dragon

Wow, I have not posted in a long time! Life has been busy, and I've been having way too much fun adjusting to my new job as Design/Production Assistant/Store Manager/

Client Coordinater/All Things Wedding at Twig & Fig {and loving it more each day!}. I really can't express how lucky I feel to be there, and to be able to do what I love for a living!

My design boss Suzie always thinks up fun last-minute projects, so last week she asked me to help her with the design of these small business-card sized Chinese New Year notes, and she found these amazing gold gilded envelopes to go with them. We're now selling them in the store (since Chinese New Year is January 25th!) so if you're in the Bay Area come visit us in Berkeley and grab a pack!

Card Design One

 Card Design Two

 Card Detail

Amazing Gold Envelopes

Both cards together, showing the message on the back

And I packed them up all cute to sell them in the store, with this gold cord we had!

We're selling them in packs of 6 for $7, or two packs for $12, at Twig & Fig.

{Happy New Year, Dragons!}

A Touch of Inspiration!

Usually I wait to post photos of a completely finished project, but sometimes it's fun to see the beginnings! I had a great meeting with a new wedding client the other night, and was putting their inspiration board together on Pinterest (and getting really excited about it) so I decided to share a snapshot!

I'll try to post in-progress photos of the project as I work on it. Stoked!

{<3 Stephanie}

Twig & Fig: Halloween Display

One of the perks of managing a retail store is I have the freedom to set up creative seasonal displays! I took the initiative with Halloween coming up to create a few decorations for a Fall display at Twig & Fig, inspired by lots of fun things I've been pinning on Pinterest (See my full Halloween board here!)

I found a template online for these maple leaves, and cut them out of some of our handmade paper to make a leaf garland.

I also found this bat template, and created some hanging bats.

Then, inspired by the feature article on Country Living this month, I tried my hand at decoupaging pumpkins, also with some of our handmade paper.

Overall, I'm pretty excited about it! It was really fun to figure out how to best display fall-related products, without the decorations I made overpowering them. I'm looking forward making more fun displays for Christmas!

{Sincerely, Stephanie}

Amy & Patrick: Wedding Fans

It's been a while since my last post, I have been busy transitioning and creating lots of fun new stuff! I am so excited about one of my most recent wedding clients, Amy & Patrick, who hired me to design and letterpress them some custom Program Fans. Enjoy!

All this gorgeous photography by Azuree Witala

Updates: Coming Back Home

We Moved!

John and I drove a UHaul full of stuff 800 miles from Seattle to Oakland this weekend, officially closing the chapter of our lives in Seattle. The change was bittersweet: We were both so excited to come back home, but also so sad to leave all of the amazing people we met while living there. I know that we will have a lot of life-long friends from that experience.

For now, I'll be working as a part-time Creative Sales Associate at Paper Source, and hopefully picking up some freelance work. I'm also planning to contact some florists to see if I can apprentice with them and help set up weddings. Excited to try my hand at it!

Updates: As Told Through Instagram

A fallen friend on the way to work the other day.

Today was my last day at YIU Studio.

I am so grateful for the experience, and all of the amazing crafty production I was able to do while working there! And it seems only fitting that on my last day, I Japanese bound almost 100 promo books.

And finally, some wedding invites I'm working on this weekend.

They're digital but any wedding is a fun wedding to me! Can't wait to have them all finished to send to the bride on Tuesday.

{All photos altered with the Instagram App for iPhone.}

Letterpress in your FACE!

This past week I've been working on production for Dovely, a new product by YIU Studio. Ariel Nay Nebeker came to take pictures of me while I was working at Myrtle Alley Press, and here's an awesome .gif she made!



BAM!

Busy Bee! {Behance Portfolio Updates}

I have been hard at work editing the photos Ariel took of my portfolio a few months ago, and trying out the new Behance ProSite application (basically a CMS website where you don't need to know any code, which is a thumbs-up for me!)

I'm really excited to finally update my portfolio with new work, and share it with all of you.

Here's a sneak peek of the new site:

I'm hoping to launch it in the next few days. For now, take a look through my updated Behance Profile!

{There is also now a link to it on the left hand side of this blog}

Seattle Chamber Music Society

{I've decided to post past projects as I get around to editing the photos and putting them on my website (the ever-talented Ariel Nay Nebeker re-photographed my work back in March). Here's the first one!}

While interning at Cognition Studio last fall, I had the pleasure of working on the winter festival campaign for the Seattle Chamber Music Society. The festival includes a 4-day concert series at Benaroya Hall, and a concert catered towards families, which had the theme of 'Babar' this season.

Flyer for Winter Family Concert

Because the imagery had to be 'childlike,' but cater to parents, I decided to play with paper-cutting to give the character of Babar a more sophisticated feel.

The look was applied to postcards and bookmarks as well.

And, I made an animated .gif ad! I also got to design a poster to be hung outside of Benaroya Hall, promoting the concert series. On a slightly unrelated note, I also got to design coasters for an SCMS benefit in January, celebrating Mendelssohn's birthday. It was the first time I've done an illustration for a client (with help from Dave at Cognition), and I had a ton of fun with it! All photographs by Ariel Nay Nebeker

Seattle Children's Hospital Poetry Broadside

For the past month, I have been honored to be a part of a project made possible by the School of Visual Concepts and Seattle Arts & Lectures' Writers in the Schools program. Sierra Nelson, a poet with WITS, is the poet in residence at the Seattle Children's Hospital, and has been working with kids there once a week helping to teach them poetry and writing. Sierra picked 12 poems from 12 different students to be turned into letterpressed broadsides by printers at SVC.

We went around the room to pick our poems, and I was lucky enough to end up with 12 year old Emma's gorgeous poem, which is a blessing dedicated to her brother Owen (who I later found out is also her bone marrow donor).

Because there was so much imagery in the words, I didn't want to add any additional imagery of my own. Instead, I decided to treat the poem typographically, and call out important phrases in color and wood type.

The first black layer is all hand-set lead type. I was so excited for the opportunity to hand-set, since I usually end up doing things with polymer. It's good to get some hand-setting practice!

The 12 broadsides will all be collated together into a beautiful portfolio designed by Bonnie Thompson Norman. To unify the different broadsides, we were to print the majority of the poster in black, and then add an accent color of either Process Blue, Process Yellow, or Warm Red (of course, we were allowed to do more than two, but we had to do at least one color).

I chose blue because though my instinct was yellow, I knew the blocks of text would probably start to look like bumble bee stripes.

I added some trans white to the blue, so it wouldn't be super bright.

The star in the middle of the last sentence was the biggest one in the shop, so to fill in the white space around it (and add the yellow I so desperately wanted!) I decided to do some post-printing spray paint to add a shine to the star. I had to make a jig to make sure the spray paint would be the same size each time.

Overall, I'm pretty pleased with how the poster turned out, and I hope it showcases Emma's poem in the best light possible! I can't wait for her to see it!

Emma (on the left), and her brother Owen. Before designing the poster, I had a short email exchange with Emma's father, and he sent me this photo of them. It really made the project hit home for me; I am so humbled by her strength, courage, and beautiful writing.